BIG WATER BANDIT

About Me

I am currently 17 years old. All I want to do is kayak, all I dream about is kayaking, and all I talk about is kayaking. Call it obsession call it passion. What ever it is I am loving life and woo hoo this is a fun ride and I hope you enjoy my adventures.

Did you like Barely Legal 1? well this is gonna be way more DOPE. Barely Legal 2 brings you around the world following the adventures of Airborn athletes as they work to become ..... legal i guess.Keep an eye out for BL2 Soon!

I have been trying to get white water kayaking out the public for a while. It started with an interview from Ithaca Times about what I do. This was soon followed up by an interview request from Alex Ash, a student at Ithaca College. The Interview resulted in the article below.
I was really pleased to see how the article came out, and I hope you enjoy it.
Thanks to Alex Ash and Ithaca Dreams for a great write up.

We finished up our latest video Forster Stout Tour 2. Check it our if you like some great carnage and some styled lines especially from Kyle Hull. Watch Airborn Athletics go to church on some big drops!
http://vimeo.com/39323051

Continuing my luck with high water out west, we rallied to Outlet Park and Huck. Outlet is a 60 footer in Washington State with a pleasant little eddy to catch at the lip. No one else seemed too excited on running it, so I offered to go twice. With a stout crew of six people, we rallied to the drop. After positioning a Go Pro plus two “extreme cams” on my boat and me, I began the icy bushwhack to the put in. I spent a good minuet in the top eddy turning my go pro on and forgetting to start it recording. Soaking in the calm feeling one gets when there is no turning back, I peeled out. Taking a correction stroke that put me flat, I was surprised to feel the soft landing.

My second run.

After a harsh hike out, I repeated the whole ordeal! This time, one extreme cam fell off in the pool and my skirt ripped a bit, but otherwise I had a great line! Savoring the double win of the day, the crew headed back to Hood River for left-over pizza and some editing.

We are leaving for the Futa tomorrow and yesterday it began to rain and didn't stop until 12pm today. We took our chance to run some waterfalls before we headed down. With Nevados being way to high to run we headed to the 20 footer on Rio Turbio. It was lower then I have ever seen it run and was only about 6 feet deep at the bottom. We had to pile rocks around the lip to channel the water into one place so we didn't scrape as we went over the lip. It gave us a great chance to hit hard lines and stomp boofs with authority. We saw two great peatons and face plants today. It was Great Success!

Three days into the 3rd quarter with New River Academy in Chile the Nevados came in. They had dropped out before my break started and we are not allowed to run anything over 30 feet with the school. I had spent the last 44 days of break rain dancing and praying for water so I could run more stouts. Now they were it was finally in and school had started. This time I was lucky, my mom had been visiting for a little while and was able to singe me out.
Me, Tino, Jake, Hunt, and Bartl left to go run Demshitz Drop. On getting there it was quite low but I was prepared for it and thought the hit would be worth it. Jake went first, went sideways down most of it and missed the rock at the bottom by about a foot. On my run I hit a boof flake on the reconnect, I boofed out a bit and stomped it back down. On Hunts run he petoned on the re connect and was lucky enough to keep going straight and not go over vert.
It was a sick day and I'm stoked about the fact that I got to run it this year. Definitely worth the low water hit witch turned out to not be that bad. GREAT SUCCESS!

Our prime run right outside our hostel has one of the best big water rapids in the Pucone area. Mariman is usually the portage of the run combined with last laughs but those two rapids are the whole reason we do the run now. The rapid consists of two boofs the first one to get over a reactionary that leads to the bad side of the hole the the secant one to get through the river wide hole seen in the pictures. As Eric Bartl showed the the last time we ran the rapid it is very shallow on the left side of the hole and he received several skinned knuckles and a rock in his back. It is super fun and is amazing training for big water paddling.

Jackson Kayak

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Not always to be followed but considered

So this should be the rule: whatever frightens you, go into it. Just put aside all safety measures, securities; just gamble. The whole of life belongs to the gambler, and the whole mind has become a business man: calculating, thinking of profit and loss, never taking a risk -- and risk is needed. Life comes to those who risk, who live dangerously, almost on the verge of death.